Live with the Flow, Baby
Live with the Flow, Baby (Nagare Nagasarete Ikiru jan yo 流れ流されて生きるじゃんよ) is the first episode of Space Dandy. Synopsis Dandy and QT are a pair of alien hunters, who make their living by finding rare alien species and having them registered. While staying at the breastaurant chain BooBies, they encounter Meow, who claims to have information on where to find exotic alien species that are not yet registered. Plot Recap The episode begins with the Narrator telling the story of Space Dandy and his robot companion QT as they travel across the galaxy looking for unregistered species of aliens...in space. While traveling through space, Dandy is giving QT a lecture about why he is fascinated with women's posteriers instead of their chests. He claims that a woman's butt is vastly underappreciated because all the attention is focused on her breasts. QT, who doesn't understand Dandy's words, expresses his frustrations and tells Dandy to let the Narrator do the prologue first. The Narrator then speaks by explaining the background of Space Dandy: in the Space Dandy universe, mankind has unlocked the secrets of space travel, allowing them to spread through the stars. However, mankind is only a small speck compared to the vast list of alien species that live in multiple galaxies. Upon realizing the difficulty of naming all the existing alien species, the Narrator says "I'm done" and promptly leaves, making Dandy and QT comment on his laziness. But QT also realizes that they're leaning on the fourth wall, and tells Dandy to focus or else their story is never going anywhere and viewers will never pay attention. Dandy then orders QT to punch in the coordinates for Boobies, and when QT asks why he wants to go there, Dandy claims it might help him find unregistered aliens. QT is not pleased, but he takes him there anyway. At Boobies, Dandy is enjoying himself. QT reminds him he's goofing off instead of hunting aliens like he's supposed to. Dandy brushes this off with an excuse that he's under a disguise and pretending to have fun so people won't know he's an alien hunter. Suddenly he spots one of the Boobies waitresses walking by and looks after her with a lustful fascination. QT comments that disguises aren't supposed to drool. The Narrator comments that customers ogling the sexy waitressess at Boobies is common. Boobies is a "breastaurant", a vastly popular chain of reastaurants where physically attractive and busty girls, no matter what alien species they are, are employed as servers. However, the species of Boobies' waitresses depend on the particular breastaraunt's location. It is revealed that Dandy is a big fan of Boobies and made it his life goal to travel to every existing Boobies restaurant. His dream is to buy the entire chain and eat every dish served by Boobies. (QT shortly comments that the Narrator only cares about narrating when Boobies is concerned.) While Dandy is slacking off, QT searches for any unregistered aliens, using an alien species encyclopedia as an aid for his scanners. Meanwhile, Dandy is sitting by himself at a table when he is visited by a Boobies waitress, Honey, who comes in with his food order. Honey's sexy appearance instantly catches Dandy's eye, and he mentally thanks Boobies for this wonderful sight. Honey asks if Dandy would like anything else, and the alien hunter answers, "A Gilgamesh Tequila". When Honey inquires with his name, Dandy answers in a James Bond-esque manner: "I'm Dandy, but you can call me 'Space Dandy'." Dandy and Honey proceed to engage in a small conversation, but when Dandy starts talking about his alien-hunting business, he is interrupted by a nearby dance-off, which Honey promptly runs off to join. Meanwhile, QT's search for unregistered aliens isn't going so well, with his scanners frequently coming up with negatives. He shortly bumps into Dandy, who is curious to him why a robot like QT isn't installed with the usual automatic information database like most robots are. QT explains that his model is too old to be updated with new software. After receiving this answer, Dandy calls QT "obsolete" and wonders what his trading price would be. Though Dandy reveals that he is joking, QT is distressed over being replaced with a newer model, though he quickly denies it. Suddenly QT reveals that his battery is at 5%. Dandy orders him to go into power-saving mode, which the robot does. Later, Dandy is searching for unregistered aliens, aided by QT. Soon they spot Meow, a Betelgeusian. The strange mark on Meow's face causes them both to speculate that Meow is part of a unique subspecies. Unfortunately, QT's battery life completely runs out at this point, and he shuts down. Over at Meow's table, the Betelgeusian covertly uses his smartphone's camera to take erotic pictures of Boobies' waitresses. Dandy unexpectedly walks over and sits next to Meow, with a depowered QT in tow. Meow, unnerved by Dandy's questioning, thinks he's going to be punished for his voyeurism and runs off. Dandy then uses his alien-hunting gear to try catch Meow; unfortunately, due to his poor aim, he ends up pulling innocent alien bystanders into the crossfire. However, Dandy's accidental trapping of a random alien, who exploded from the pleasure of being tied up with two Boobies waitressed, leads to Meow flying through the air and being stuck in the middle of a high chair, which Dandy promptly sits on in triumph. Immediately after this fiasco, Honey comes over, having had been looking for Dandy the whole time, to give the alien hunter a Boobies sticker as a bonus for his previous Gilgamesh Tequila order. Remembering the strange mark on Meow's face, he pulls it off and realizes, to his dismay, that his unique "mark" was actually a Boobies sticker. Meanwhile, aboard Dr. Gel's spaceship, Dr. Bea has managed to pinpoint the location of Dandy. Pleased with this discovery, Dr. Gel prepares to capture his target. Outside, a galactic war rages between two opposing forces: the Gogol Empire, and the Jaicro Empire. The Narrator explains that they are locked in a battle for ultimate control of the entire universe. As the battle rages on, Dandy's ship, the Aloha Oe, passes by as if oblivious to what's going on. Inside the Aloha Oe, Meow is given a summary of Dandy and QT's professions as alien hunters. However, as told by QT, they will only get paid of the aliens they catch are unregistered. Meow then claims that he has information on where to find such aliens, much to Dandy and QT's shock. The casual manner in which Meow mentions it makes them both uncertain on whether they should let him stay in the Aloha Oe. QT believes that this otherwise golden opportunity to earn big cash is too convenient, but Dandy is more willing to go with it. Dandy then asks for Meow's real name, which Meow states to be "Mymamo". Confused, Dandy decides to name him "Meow" in lieu of his cat-like appearance, to Meow's complete dismay. Dandy insults Meow even further by calling him a "space cat", which Meow angrily protests to. On Dr. Gel's spaceship, Dr. Gel and Dr. Bea have informed their boss, Admiral Perry, that they have found Dandy. It is revealed that the Gogol Empire has been in pursuit of Dandy, seeing him as the key for their goals of galactic conquest. To aid Dr. Gel and Dr. Bea, Admiral Perry has given them command over the Seventh Fleet. Aboard the Aloha Oe, Meow is having difficulty pinpointing a location of unregistered aliens on their ship's space map. Frustrated, QT and Meow turn to Dandy for help, but their leader has grown apathetic and lazy at this point. QT tells Dandy to stop pretending he's listening and actually give some input. This causes Dandy to go on an impassioned rant about "living with the flow" (hence the episode's title), which ends with him striking an epic pose. Meow admits Dandy's speech was deep in a stupid way. QT bluntly says it was just stupid. Elsewhere, the Gogol Empire's Seventh Fleet teleports to the location of Dr. Gel's spaceship. Dr. Gel is determined to chase Dandy and capture him for the good of the Gogol Empire. On the Aloha Oe, Meow asks if Dandy intends to warp to their destination. Dandy refuses; when Meow insists, Dandy tells him that he doesn't want to use the warp drive because it'll ruin his hair. Despite Dandy's refusal, Meow presses the warp button anyway, causing the Aloha Oe to shake. QT explains that their warp drive is broken and they never bothered to fix it. The crew is shortly transported to a white void, with a chain-like object floating in the middle. QT remembers that the chain is a cosmic string; pulling at it will potentially distort space and time, trapping them for eternity. Despite the robot's warnings, a curious Dandy decides to pull the cosmic string anyway, causing the Aloha Oe to disappear. Dandy's pulling of the cosmic string inadvertantly allows him and his crew to evade the pursuing Dr. Gel. However, the incident also leads to another discovery: the fabled element Pyonium, which the Gogol Empire is desperately looking for. Meanwhile, the Aloha Oe is taken to a planet which Meow claims is a place full of unregistered aliens. QT uses the ship's matter transporter to take Dandy and Meow down, but due to being an older model, the matter transporter takes a long time. Meow comments that simply flying down to the planet would be faster. Upon hearing of Dr. Gel and Bea's failure to capture Dandy, Admiral Perry is enraged. Dr. Gel asks if it would be acceptable to find Dandy next week, but Admiral Perry is so enraged that he punishes Dr. Gel for his incompentence by making his ship explode, killing both passengers inside. On the strange planet, Meow and Dandy finally finish transporting, and find a whole variety of interesting monsters. Meow claims that the planet's residents are rather docile, but the duo quickly learns the hard way that the aliens they intend to capture are extremely territorial, and end up being pursued as prey. Dandy tells QT to transport them back to the Aloha Oe, but unfortunately, the process will take just as long. When Dandy and Meow are found by an alien predator, Dandy shoots at it, only to end up shooting at a boulder which makes it fall down. The "boulder" is revealed to be another alien in disguise, and it defeats the first alien. Suddenly the cliff face gives way and a golem-like monster emerges from within. As the monsters engage in battle with each other, Dandy and Meow, who were buried when the cliff face collapsed, are freed by a seismic earthquake created by the alien golem. QT also comes under attack when he finds that he accidentally transported an alien predator instead of Dandy and Meow aboard the Aloha Oe. The alien chases him all over the ship, and finally traps the robot in the cockpit. Dandy tells QT to use his last resort, which is a explosive detonator disguised as a surfer doll. Dandy plans to use this resort to take out the alien monsters and destroy the planet along with them. QT presses the doll's head (which is the detonator switch), and asks Dandy what happens next. Dandy reveals that he didn't have a backup plan in store, which dooms the Aloha Oe crew as the planet is destroyed in a supernova-like explosion, killing everything and everyone on it. The Narrator concludes in an eulogy that Space Dandy's adventures and heroic sacrifice will be immortalized for all time... or not. Characters ''Aloha Oe crew'' *Dandy *QT *Meow ''Gogol Empire'' *Dr. Gel *Bea *Admiral Perry ''Others'' *Rose Reginald (cameo) *Honey *The Narrator Voice Cast English Dub *Dandy: Ian Sinclair *Meow: Joel McDonald *QT: Alison Viktorin *Dr. Gel: J. Michael Taturn *Bea: Micah Solusod *Admiral Perry: Kent Williams *Honey: Alexis Tipton *The Narrator: R. Bruce Elliot Japanese Dub *Dandy: Junichi Suwabe *Meow: Hiroyuki Yoshino *QT: Uki Satake *Dr. Gel: Yukinori Ishizuka (credited as Unshō Ishizuka) *Bea: Kosuke Hatakeyama *Admiral Perry: Takashi Tanaka (credited as "Banjō Ginga") *Honey: Chiaka Naitou (credited as "Yurin") *The Narrator: Masaaki Yajima Trivia * The kanji "Muda Muda" can be seen at one point during Dandy's "Living with the Flow" speech. This is a reference to the manga JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. * Dandy's "Living with the Flow" speech possibly serves as foreshadowing to the Season 2 finale, where it's revealed that he has massive amounts of Pyonim energy which allows him to traverse across different dimensions and universes easily, hence "living with the flow". * Dr. Gel references the Pixar film Toy Story by stating his intentions to pursue Dandy all the way "to infinity... and beyond". Category:Episodes Category:Season 1